The medium-specific fault as an aesthetic in past, present and
future video and electronic moving image art
John McAndrew
Submitted as part of the assessment for BA (Hons) Fine Art Module FAR3001
Friday 18th December 2009 i Acknowledgements
I would like to say thank you to everyone who has helped me out during the course of researching and writing this dissertation in particular my family, my friends and my associates in university, my dissertation tutor Jane Topping for providing sound advice and support, Anthony Discenza, Clint Enns, Iman Moradi, Scott Sinclair, everyone who replied to my post on Rhizome, all the members of my Destructural Video group on Facebook, LUX, REWIND, Electronic Arts Interlux, Video Data Bank and the Henry Moore Institute Library in Leeds.
For more information regarding destructural video please visit:
2. Chapter 1: 3. Video: David Hall, Mary Lucier, Bill Viola, Lynda Benglis, David Critchley, Pipilotti Rist, Anthony Horowitz 3. Chapter 2: 9. The Medium Vs The Media: David Hall, Martha Rosler, Anthony Discenza, Takeshi Murata, Paul B. Davis 3. Chapter 3: 17 The Signal: The Vasulkas (Woody Vasulka & Steina), Karl Klomp, BOTBORG (Joe Musgrove & Scott Sinclair) 5. Conclusion 24 6. Illustrations List 26 7. Illustrations 28 8. Appendix 1. 37 What Is Destructural Video? 9. Appendix 2. 38 Destructural Video - Rhizome 10. DVD tracklisting 46 11. References 47 12. Bibliography 50
iii Abstract
In this text I will be exploring a genre of video and electronic moving image art that exploit medium-specific faults in technology and their resulting glitches as an aesthetic, which I have termed destructural. Taking inspiration from other artistic fields such as experimental music, action painting and structural filmmaking, alongside current discussions in art regarding glitch aesthetics (coinciding with the 2009 publication of Iman Moradi and Ant Scotts book Glitch: Designing Imperfection), artists working in this genre have evolved video technology beyond its original limited capabilities, ironically through its misuse and by celebrating its mistakes. In this text I will explore the history and development of artists exploring destructural approaches to the medium; from early formalist experiments with cameras and videotape; to independent artists that employ the glitch in retaliation against the mainstream media; to the development of image processing tools which allow direct manipulation of the electronic signal; to recent digital video and new media artworks that provoke pixels, compression artefacts and glitches to act in unusual ways; to artists giving dated technology a new lease of life through creative misuse; and finally to recent experiments in achieving synaesthesia through live audiovisual improvisation which bring all these influences into perfect unison. 1 Introduction
The glitch is an unwanted technical discrepancy which, in video and electronic moving image technology at least, appears as damage within the audio-visual field. Iman Moradi states that the glitch is neither the cause, nor the error itself, it is simply the product of an error and more specifically its visual manifestation (Moradi & Scott, 2009, p.8). The glitch acts as a reminder that video is still a relatively new technology that is continually being developed, tested and improved.
Ultimately however, electronic image technology will never become perfect due to its man-made origins of creation, ripe with human flaws and shortcomings. Both audiovisual technology and the human body operate as a complex circuit of wires or neurons, through which electrical signals power along them, deciding which parts to turn on and off to operate - with even the slightest inconsistency in the circuit, a temporary lapse of information can provoke a glitch in the system. Whether it perpetrates itself as a garbled video image in technology, or as a lapse in speech or memory in human beings, the glitch is more inherent in our life encounters than we often realise. Taking Marshall McLuhans famous phrase, the medium is the message (McLuhan, 1964, p.7) to its logical extreme, a number of artists both past and present - have found attraction to these medium-specific faults and have purposefully incorporated glitch techniques into bodies of work that raise questions not only about audiovisual technology as a successful artistic medium, but also about its role in relation to the human condition and nature. 2 Destructural video (McAndrew, 2009) is a self-invented term to describe the work and philosophy of these video and electronic moving image artists. Taking inspiration from the work of experimental music composers, abstract expressionist painters and structural filmmakers, destructural video artists employ these avant-garde aesthetics within electronic visuals. Destructural [sic] is not a real word, but rather a portmanteau (or more aptly, a corruption) of the words deconstruct, structural and destruct, as I believe that just like the artists I write about have operated or reworked technology in ways their original manufacturers had never intended for them to be used, similarly an appropriate reworking of language to accurately describe the artworks of these artists should also follow suit. Likewise, whilst destructural may be a revisionist term applied to a niche subject within the history of both past and present video art, video itself is intrinsically a revisionist medium, dictated by its ability to rewind, record and rewrite its course of time with ease.
I wish to argue how destructural approaches to video and moving image have advanced these technologies in new exciting ways - not just by exposing faults, but by also developing the resulting glitches as new visual aesthetics - whilst these artists simultaneously revolt against these resulting advances, often as their techniques and tools are assimilated by the mainstream media. I also wish to question current and future technologies in order to understand whether the glitch still has a future as we move closer towards a reliance on data as a digital intangible, rather than degradable physical entities.
3 Chapter 1: Video (From the Vidicon Tube to the VHS Tape) David Hall, Mary Lucier, Bill Viola, David Critchley, Pipilotti Rist, Anthony Horowitz
When Sony released the Portapak in 1967 (Fig 1), consisting of a handheld camera with inbuilt microphone, battery and a separate video tape recorder - the VTR itself having already appeared for general sale in 1965 - artists considered this an economical and immediate alternative to film, for videotape as a electromagnetic format allowed a user to rewind and rerecord over the tape, enabling reuse of its medium. Its relatively lightweight design also enabled the camera and video tape recorder to be carried around easily by one person; an impracticality before due to the size of video tape recorders (SMECC, 2007). As with all pioneering technologies however, the Portapak camera was rife with faults which restricted artists from using video in the same way film could be used. Due to its limited capabilities, the footage that it shot could not be broadcast on television, and it was only with the arrival of the Time Base Corrector in 1972 that deviation errors in the video signal caused by inconsistencies in equipment could be electronically corrected (Lovejoy, 2004, p. 117). The luxury of access to editing facilities for many artists allowing the ability to accurately and cleanly edit videos was not conceivable in the early years of personal video equipment. Whilst many artists would accept these faults, a number of them would test the limits of the camera and the videotape, finding attraction to the faults inherent in this technology through the unorthodox manipulation of the medium. Working directly outside of the influence and control of the mainstream media establishment would give rise to the destructural aesthetic in video art. 4 One of the major faults of the Portapak (and indeed many professional video cameras of the time too) was the accidental burn of the surface of the vidicon tube - the cameras equivalent of the cathode ray tube found in older model televisions - whenever it was pointed towards an exceptionally bright colour contrasted against darkness; producing a ghostly path of light for every subsequent movement, until it slowly dissipated. The Portapak, limited to one vidicon tube as opposed to the three used in professional equipment, was therefore very susceptible to damage and this trailing effect can be unintentionally seen in numerous early videos made at the time.
David Hall, one of the first artists in the UK working with video, explored the creative use of the burnt vidicon tube through a series of experiments in his 1973-74 videotape Vidicon Inscriptions (Fig. 2) (Track 1). In one part of the video he directs the camera lens at a light bulb, effectively drawing with the camera; a literal manifestation of Douglas Daviss video manifesto statement that The Camera is a Pencil (1974, p.437). As time and movement appear as one continuous evolving image framed within the television screen, these experiments with light as an expression of time and bodily movement can be seen in the context of the action paintings of Jackson Pollock, as well as the auto-destructive art of Gustav Metzger. In a later part of the video, Hall sets up the camera on a tripod aimed directly at a mirror; the camera and artist reflected to the left of the screen illuminated by a bright light. By repeating the action of slowly placing a board in front of the lens, and moving the camera and himself to the right before removal of the board, each time the 5 artist shows a trail of light and movement, resulting in what Hall calls, a stratified consolidation of past and present time as a single image (1975, p.9).
Hall would later expand on these experiments for a public art installation in 1975, coincidentally the same year that the artist Mary Lucier produced Dawn Burn (Fig. 3) which was another important experiment in camera misuse and a pioneering example of the video installation. Aiming a camera directly at a sunrise over the course of seven days - in direct response to being told not to do just that (Drake, 1998) - and presenting the results on seven monitors to show the effects of the suns path burning the vidicon tubes, Lucier presented the destructive yet progressive effects of nature against technology, signifying light as the first time-based medium.
Bill Viola also explored the effects of the burnt vidicon tube from as early as 1973, but it was his 1981 colour videotape Hatsu-Yume (First Dream) (Fig. 4) (Track 2) made in Japan where he produced perhaps the most stunning employments of this flaw in his night-time slow motion sequences. In a scene where he is being driven through a bustling city with his camera aimed at the street lamps above, the erratic movement of the camera coupled with the abundance of light sources produces some of the most sublimely beautiful and painterly of light trails ever seen in video art: Viola, in an accompanying statement to the video (1981, p.80), stated Video treat light like water - it becomes a fluid on the video tube. Perhaps as an inadvertent result of this video being made - Sony had lent Viola brand new camera equipment whilst working under the first artist-in-residence scheme for them - the vidicon tube 6 would soon be superseded by the charge coupled device (or CCD), which did not suffer from these same flaws. Although vidicon tube technology would nearly completely vanish from future video art as a result, it did not go without, fittingly, leaving a historical trail of light in its memory.
The sculptor Lynda Benglis, known previously for her melted, formless sculptures using layers of wax and latex paint, would take a deconstructive approach to the video medium itself in her early videotapes. In her first videotape Noise (1972) (Track 5), Benglis brings attention to the limitations of playback and recording technology through refilming numerous pre- recorded generations of video and static from a television, exploring ways to distort image and sound. Most interestingly however, she intentionally attempts to edit the videotape at certain points, producing violent tracking lines and sound disruptions which break up the image and sound quality noticeably. As a deliberate action against the rules of the videotape medium, it is an early example of celebrating the glitch in video art, with medium specific faults being encouraged by the artist through improper use of the equipment.
The manipulation of the playback speed of videotape can provoke other medium specific faults. In David Critchleys Static Acceleration (1977) (Fig. 5) (Track 4), the footage of a previously seen action whereby the artist turns his head violently from left to right and back again in time to the increasing tempo of the sound of a ball hitting a tennis racquet, is played back in slow motion via the manipulation of the tape speed control on an edit deck, so that sound and head movements play at a steady tempo, rather than an quickening 7 rate. Through this process, properties or anomalies inherent in the medium (Critchley, 1978, p. 12) are revealed, namely the electronic scan fields or frames of video, which stutter in frequency depending on the attempts to control time. In a review for its screening, David Hall asserts that this piece simply, yet admirably, combines and manipulates time and fundamental aspects of the process in a carefully considered work only possible in, and about, video (1977, p. 21). Contextually, Static Acceleration can be seen as an aesthetical response to the pioneering photography work of Eadweard Muybridge, with both artists exploring time fragmentally within their medium and employing the grid background as a pseudo-scientific reference.
In her early video work, the Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist employs extended techniques of video speed playback to effective use. In her 1986 videotape Im Not the Girl Who Misses Much (Fig. 6) (Track 5), produced whilst she was still a student, the artist faces the camera and excitedly dances and sings along to John Lennons song Happiness Is A Warm Gun. The footage is slightly out of focus - we can only see a faintly detailed blur of the artist - and the videotape recording has been manipulated in such a way to speed up her actions and sounds, highlighting numerous flaws in the videotape medium over the course of the video. With the image out of focus, our attention is directed more to the distortions of the video tape, much like in one of Bengliss refilming experiments. In (Entlastungen) Pipilottis Fehler (Absolution - Pipilottis Mistakes) (1988) (Fig. 7) (Track 6), Rist expands upon these techniques in a narrative exploring her own mistakes in life. Her concurrent practice of working as a technician whilst making the video 8 enabled her to understand how video could be unusually manipulated; in a 1994 interview with Christoph Doswald (1994, p.124) she explained some of her processes including her overridden use of the Time Base Corrector, ironically to cause rather than hide glitches:
I subjected the images to all kinds of interference: I played them too quickly for two simultaneously activated recorders, then put the pictures through a time base corrector that evens out irregularities. That was only one of twenty-five kinds of disturbance that I experimented with on the tape. Asking too much or too little of the machines resulted in pictures that I was thoroughly familiar with, my inner pictures - my psychosomatic symptoms.
The more complex a technology becomes, the easier the electronic signal can become muddled to reveal its very foundations at the same time, even the simplest of procedures can provoke a glitch, if repeated excessively enough times. Perhaps the ultimate statement against the reliability of analog videotape and its technology came from Anthony Horowitz in his 1990 videotape Maxell (Fig. 8) who by employing two video recorders to record and rerecord the loss of image quality that occurs over multiple generations of VHS tape. Using the Maxell brand of videotape, with the word Maxell embellished on the screen, the artist lays waste to this companys (or any videotape companies for that matter) claims of accurate reproduction by turning a flawed technology against itself, amplifying every discrepancy that appears - like a photocopy of a photocopy - until the word Maxell is eventually consumed by generations of static and noise.
9 Chapter 2: The Medium Vs The Media (Difficult Technicalities) David Hall, Martha Rosler, Anthony Discenza, Takeshi Murata, Paul B. Davis
With the rise of independent video making - a potentially revolutionary idea since video could be (and was to a degree) used by anyone, regardless of gender, race or sexuality a questioning of the hegemony of mainstream broadcasting also took place. Using television news programmes as their most effective source of derision, a number of artists discovered that employing technical difficulties could temporarily falter the professionalism of broadcasting companies to raise public awareness of the deceptiveness of television, as well as the ulterior motives of these networks who broadcast truth, no matter how biased it may be to appease their funders.
When the UK artist David Hall was commissioned to produce a video artwork for broadcast on the BBC programme Arena in 1976, he produced This Is A Television Receiver (Fig. 9) (Track 7) - a remake of sorts of his earlier video installation This Is A Video Monitor (1973) in which footage of a person describing their visual and audible representation on the equipment they are being watched on in formalist terms, is refilmed from playback over a number of generations until reduced to noise. It also held similarities with 7 TV Pieces (1971), an earlier television intervention in association with Scottish Television. In This Is A Television Receiver, Hall had the newsreader Richard Baker read out a similar text to the camera starting with the line This is a television Receiver, which is a box to describe the television shell itself, later 10 reinforcing that the light, passing through the curved glass surface[of the screen] form shapes which often appear as images, in this case, the image of a man but it is not a man (Hall, 1976), and that the sounds he speaks appear to be real but are not. By refilming this footage repeatedly, each time adding distortions upon distortions to this presentation in circumstances almost exactly similar to composer Alvin Luciers 1969 tape composition I Am Sitting in a Room, this highly subversive video - broadcast unannounced for maximum effectiveness - revealed a then-household name television figure to be a paradox; whilst he is known as a messenger of truth, his sound and image is false and an illusion. In an interview with Chris Meigh-Andrews (2000), Hall recalled the effect this video had at the time:
My mother - forget the art elite - was absolutely distraught when she saw that piece, because she believed in Richard Baker. He was, and had been, the principal news reader. The one person for whom you could suspend all disbelief was the person reading the news. Someone well-loved and seen for so long. Then when his image began to disintegrate and he started to be critical in a sense, of television indirectly, through what he was saying, that whole deconstruction, floored her whole belief.
Other artists have subverted the power of the mainstream media through the use of actual news footage of a suspect nature. In Martha Roslers If It's Too Bad to Be True, It Could Be DISINFORMATION (1985) (Fig. 10) (Track 8), the artist plunders NBC and other American broadcasters 1984 reportage of an impending attack from the communist country Nicaragua, after they supposedly received MIG fighter planes from Moscow however, this news would later be revealed to be completely fabricated (Sklar, 1988, pp.209-212). 11 Rosler plays back news footage and inserts intermittent electronic distortions to the sound and image, mutilating the newsreaders script with sound fading in and out of isolated phrases which are then superimposed as a fragmented scrolling text, rendered absurd. The video image distorts violently with static and vertical hold rolling a literal representation of the lack of information or truth within the news story. Rosler wrote that the word disinformation is a term of art for systematic government lying, also termed psyop (psychological operations), against the home audience (1983) and she believes that privately-funded broadcasting institutions like NBC who present a biased form of propaganda in place of the news help to over-exaggerate such rumours, creating public fear and paranoia. Ending the video on an ironic note with a macho and rather glamorous TV commercial for the US Army only ramifies her disbeliefs in the mainstream media and the psychological and emotional games a higher power can wield on an unquestioning audience.
Whilst Rosler critiques the news using a relatively minimalist real-time approach, the digital video artist Anthony Discenza instead use video in a maximalist fashion, condensing hours of television footage into short dcollages using generations of time shifted playback. In the case of Backscatter (2005) (Fig. 11) (Track 9) - a 10 minute video created by taking 3 separate 8-hour chunks of CNN, all recorded during the first week of the Iraq conflict, and playing them at fast-forward while recording the sped-up signal onto another tape (Discenza, 2009) Discenza uses a modern day news story which also has elements of political disinformation, similar to Roslers videotape. However, Discenzas working processes are more time- 12 based, revealing the increased influx of redundant information we receive in news programming - in the San Francisco Chronicle, Kenneth Baker noted that Backscatter probably describes public memory of the invasion as media event as well as anything could, distilling war reportage to a fizz of information with no blood, no suffering, no death, nothing out of control, everything accompanied by graphics (Baker, 2006). Discenza reduces the modern day news format to its essence: an overabundance of technical tricks, distracting us from realising that news broadcasters never really know the full story either.
It might be ironic to consider that the graphics employed by mainstream television networks have their origins in the inventiveness of the pioneering work of image processing artists (as discussed in Chapter 3) - only the mainstream medias uses these techniques at their most sanitised level. Discenzas video perhaps suggests that what they may lack in aggressiveness, they more than make up for in sheer volume. It could be argued that this assimilation is only fair game however, as artists have often appropriated the tools and techniques of broadcasters and expanded on them in an attempt to question the media; the guerrilla techniques favoured by groups like Videofreex can be seen as a forerunner of news programmes reporting on the scene or accepting amateur videos from the public, whilst the editing techniques of the underground Scratch Video movement were soon assimilated by broadcasters wanting edgy visuals. Likewise, since the arrival of the video tape recorder in the 1970s, allowing video artists such as Dara 13 Birnbaum to use copyrighted films and television programmes as source material, artists have also appropriated media-created works in their own art.
The availability of personal computers in the 1990s enabled artists to work in the digital domain and opened up new possibilities for video, music and other art forms to transcend their medium. With the popularity of the internet as a creative communication tool, as well as the rise of illegal file sharing programs allowing copyrighted material to be freely shared between users, artists had an incredible wealth of information available outside of the control of television broadcasters, film distributors and music companies. The limitations of the technology at the time revealed new glitches inherent in digital video files - impatient users (such as myself) who would attempt to open up a video file before it was fully complete would sometimes see interesting compression artefacts take place, resulting in curious artists investigating the data of compressed video files to find out how they could manipulate these medium-specific glitches.
Datamoshing involves removing or replicating parts of the data found in compressed video files which can then undermine the structure of the video codec, producing a painterly bleeding pixel effect as the movement of pixels from a succeeding scene shift the frozen pixels of a former image, revealing a new image escaping from underneath old pixels. Its resulting effect, when used effectively, can be mesmerising to watch duration and space appear to fold within itself in a swirl of vibrantly coloured pixels, or when frames are copied repeatedly together, pixels merge together into an abstract, common 14 denominator of coloured artefacts the digital equivalent of the end result in Halls This is a Television Receiver and Horowitzs Maxell.
Takeshi Murata is, whilst certainly not the first to use this technique, probably the most well-known of artists to have explored it, having set the standard for how datamoshing could be employed. In his datamoshing work he uses memorable copyrighted films as his source footage, ranging from the black and white horror masterpiece Black Sunday (1960) to the action film First Blood (1982). Using select scenes from these films (he only uses one film at a time for each project), he creates incredible psychedelic animations where characters melt and morph into the scenery and vice versa, depending on the juxtaposition of the sequences he joins together. In an animation like Monster Movie (2005) (Fig. 12) (Track 10), Murata goes beyond the usual practice of editing video frames together by instead editing parts of the data itself, allowing Murata to control the resulting glitches to a certain degree. Working one frame at a time, he reorders scenes from the 1981 film Caveman in a minimum of ways - normal, reversed, duplicated, reverse-duplicated or re- encoded - to devastating effect, recalling the structural work of filmmakers Paul Sharits and Bruce Conner. Unlike other datamoshing artists, Murata exerts a total precision over the video codec - his animations can take up to a year to complete (Hirshhorn, 2007) and it shows. Muratas purposeful employment of the glitch transcends most others in the datamoshing genre by giving the glitch purpose, as the eponymous primitive monster of the video emerges from a primordial soup of pixels into an aggressive environment, resulting in a Darwinist clash between nature. Muratas addition of a funky 15 soundtrack to the animation gives it a music video quality that perhaps betrays the original source, yet his editing abilities makes the original film his own. A video like Monster Movie suggests that the glitch can be beautiful in its own regard, but also implies the danger that can lie ahead if artists merely use this technique (and therefore, the glitch in technology) as a gimmicky transitional effect as if a video is merely corrupt, rather than a technique to be respected.
In Paul B. Daviss Compression Studies 1-4 (2007), he uses an assortment of videos taken from file sharing sites and places like YouTube. Davis is associated with a group of like-minded young art collectives such as BEIGE and Paper Rad, who use retro iconography from the 1980s and 1990s, such as computer games, old television cartoons and tape culture, combined in a variety of multimedia artworks. In his Compression Studies, Davis creates audiovisual collages or mash-ups; a term stemming from combining two or more different songs together which has its origins in mp3 culture (contextually it also has similarities to the sound collages of Christian Marclay and the plunderphonics of composer John Oswald). For example, Compression Study #1 (Track 11) (Fig. 13) made with Jacob Ciocci of Paper Rad remixes the pop music videos of Rihannas Umbrella, and Zombie by The Cranberries, with each artist bursting into each others clips in time to the looped chorus, whilst Compression Study #4 (Track 12) is an imaginative merging of Matthew Barneys Cremaster 3 with Barney the Dinosaur, juxtaposing elitist art culture with disposable pop culture. However, Davis (2008) would later write about his unhappiness with this work, stating that:
16 Its like admitting that the only gesture youre capable of making as an artist is actually the edit, and when I grow up I really dont want to be an editor. Especially with the computer, when what youre dealing with are formats, its especially prevalent. [] In my show I think my work failed in this regard. I mean, messing with Cremaster 3 was obvious and hence accessible, and then also messing with Rick James, Rihanna, the Cranberries, homemade YouTube videos and Ultimate Fighting Championships was meant to suggest that pop culture content didnt matter. But it did matter - no matter how haX0r3d the compression codec was and hence how messed up the picture on the wall looked.
Datamoshing has since achieved a level of notoriety on internet discussion boards like Rhizome (Boling, 2009) after two music videos by Kanye West and Chairlift - both of which were heavily dependent on the technique stylistically - were released in quick succession to each other. Many criticised the popularisation of this video effect and its new nickname datamoshing, having previously been referred to as compression artefacts (OReilly, 2009). Ironically, there is a sense of unease amongst artists who use datamoshing now, the technique having apparently been tainted by the mainstream medias usage; Davis himself wrote for his last exhibition Define Your Terms (Or Kanye West Fucked Up My Show) at Seventeen Gallery (2009) that the very language I was using to critique pop content from the outside was now itself a mainstream cultural reference. One cant help but notice the karmic irony of artists stealing from mainstream culture and not expecting theft back. An interesting upside to this breakthrough however, is that datamoshing is now available for the public to explore via YouTube tutorials by username datamosher (2009), who has a three part instructional video series on how to datamosh. Perhaps in a way, this is a fitting end to datamoshing after all; what began as a file sharing experiment, evolved into an idea sharing experiment. 17 Chapter 3: The Signal: (Video Processing = Video Progressing) The Vasulkas (Woody Vasulka & Steina), Karl Klomp, BOTBORG (Scott Sinclair & Joe Musgrove)
By deconstructing the video camera, television and videotape medium through formalist exercises to reveal its electronic emulation of reality, artists had gained a rudimentary understanding of how this technology worked, but it was still bound by the technology provided by its original manufacturers. However, with the rise of circuit-based musical instruments such as the Moog synthesizer in 1964 allowing new sound possibilities using electronics, creative technicians began to evolve the video medium by making visual equivalents of these synthesizers (often through the reuse of existing components) to process electronic images in new ways too. With a number of artists working alongside these technicians to produce further devices for their creative abilities, artists now had the ability to independently shape the future of video for their own benefit.
Perhaps some of the most impressive and destructural examples of image processed video are the works of Czech filmmaker and engineer Woody Vasulka and Icelandic musician Steina, collectively known in the 1970s as the Vasulkas. Having worked with video since 1969, the Vasulkas have continuously sought to evolve its potential with the assistance of technicians who built image processing devices which could manipulate and control the electronic signal directly. The Vasulkas practice is characterised by trial and error experimentation, with a vast recorded video output of the 1970s largely 18 made up of self-reflexive sketches, exercises or performances produced in their studio (which looks more like a laboratory due to the sheer amount of technology they owned) showcasing the capabilities of their technology, rather than making the techniques secondary to a narrative.
Much as the pioneering work of the first video artist Nam June Paik was influenced by his associations with experimental music - his exhibition of prepared television sets in 1963 which paved the way for artists working with electronic forms of media were directly inspired by meeting the composer John Cage, who prepared musical instruments by adding objects to their mechanisms to produce new resulting sounds the Vasulkas were similarly inspired to work in video via the influence of music, another time-based medium. Woody Vasulka in a conversation (Carlut, 1992, p.500) stated:
I mostly learned from music, in the sense of how to organise these new patterns. You know, all of these waveform controls and means of composition for our early video artefacts were developed first as audio. They were directly related to the development of early musical instruments. In video, the instruments played similar functions. I believe that what I was doing was a form of practical philosophy. For the first time, I understood the speed of light as not just a part of a formula by Einstein. I could suddenly see how the signal struggles through the wires, how it gets mangled, how matter and energy combat each other.
By understanding that the video image and sound both originated from the electronic signal or the waveform, the Vasulkas realised that these two facets of video could be easily separated or interchanged with each other in creative ways, so that sound could create the image, or image could create the sound, 19 and that all their variables (brightness, pitch, speed etc.) could be pinpointed and manipulated directly, either in isolation or combined with other variables. A good example of this is Woody Vasulkas video C-Trend (1974) (Fig. 14, Track 13) - made using the Rutt/Etra Scan Processor (Fig. 15) built by Steve Rutt and Bill Etra in 1973 to create the illusion of 3D space - where sound and image appear interchangeable on the screen. Similarly, in Violin Power (1978) (Fig. 16) (Track 14), Steina is filmed playing a violin in a multitude of ways (having been an accomplished musician prior to working with Woody), which produce assorted effects to the video image. These vary from affecting the switch rate of different camera inputs pointing at her depending on the speed of her playing, through to a real time visual distortion of the image which correlates to the waveform of her violin sound (presented both vertically and horizontally, to more increasingly abstract images such as a combined visual representation of the sound waveform and image waveform. Videos like this would signify the direct relationship that video art had with experimental music and other time-based art forms, and would also prefigure recent experiments by artists combining music and video to achieve synaesthesia.
With the addition of the Digital Image Articulator to their arsenal, made by Jeffrey Schier in 1978, their work would be strengthened as they moved into early computer technologies with their later videos featuring sequences predating modern day glitch art; for example, in their video Digital Images (1978) (Track 15) showcasing this device contains many early examples of what would later be recognised as visual characteristics of the glitch, including replication, linearity and complexity (Moradi, 2004, pp.28-37), 20 produced by feedback whereby the output of the computer is sent back into the input. The commentary from Woody and Steina is joyous whilst watching these sequences due to their unique imagery - whether these images were faulty or not was not a consideration then, making us wonder when exactly a glitch was considered to be a glitch by computer manufacturers.
Compared to the work of artists like the Vasulkas, the contemporary destructural artist works invariably in a post-analog world where the equipment that was available to artists back then either no longer works anymore or is expensive to maintain at the same time, these tools have been overshadowed by digital technology and computers which can approximate similarly imagery, often within a simple downloadable plug-in. For artists who work with video in medium-specific terms, these glitch-alikes (Moradi, 2004, pp.10-11) are not quite the same. Whilst places like the Experimental TV Center in New York still own a number of original working image processors, they only hand out 40 annual artist residencies a year, meaning image processing artists have had to turn to other creative means such as circuit bending in order to produce new image processing techniques.
Circuit bending is according to Wikipedia (2004) the creative short-circuiting of electronic devices, which can produce alien effects in equipment unintended by the original manufacturers. Whilst this technique of joining new circuits together by joining soldering wires together is often applied to cheap musical equipment to create new sounds, potentially it can be done with electronic devices that can produce imagery too, resulting in bent visuals. 21 The Dutch artist Karl Klomp is known for altering pre-existing obsolete video equipment such as video mixers and character generators through the process of circuit bending. Working as a technician and part time VJ, Klomp was curious to attempt to apply circuit bending techniques to visual equipment after collaborating with a musician called Tom Verbruggen who had made his own circuit bent audio equipment. In an interview with William van Gleesen (2009, p.37), Klomp recalls his encounter with the visual glitch:
I tried to do the same with video equipment. In doing so I stumbled upon awesome glitch images that were created by the apparatus itself. [] I made circuit bend tools that I could use in a live performance. Rejecting the standard effects, every tool got [sic] its own unique tasks which created unique images. With minimal modification (making new connections in the apparatus) to existing technology I let the hardware create original visuals.
In Rex (2005) (Fig. 17) (Track 16), Klomp uses a circuit-bent video mixer to produce a wide range of often vicious visual effects which are edited to an accompanying soundtrack by Verbruggen. The video recalls Malcolm Le Grices classic structural film Berlin Horse (1970) compromised of looped and manipulated found footage of a running horse, revealing the medium qualities of the film stock. Using video, Klomps looped footage of a dog being walked acts as an allegory for a tamed (or domesticated) technology, but the erratic video bends applied to the image suggest the hidden primal aggression of technology now being unleashed - no longer fully under the manufacturers control - as a result of the destructural artists intervention disobeying the rules of how they should use technology. Now that this device is outside of a competitive marketplace, it is finally free. 22 The audiovisual work of the Australian duo Botborg, compromised of Joe Sinclair and Scott Sinclair, expands the extreme medium-specific aesthetics of image processing into a live setting, whereby sound, image and movement all interact with each other creating a gesamtkunstwerk. Combining a complex web of audio and video equipment, Botborg expands the synaesthetic ideas previously explored in art by Wassily Kandinsky and the experimental filmmaker Len Lye into a collaborative sound and video performance. The duos name derives from the name Dr. Arkady Botborger, an obscure figure from the turn of the 20 th century who was responsible for developing the esoteric science of Photosonicneurokineasthography, roughly translated as "writing the movement of nerves through use of sound and light" according to the duos website (2005), and they use this pseudo-science and figure as a context for their performance work. In personal email correspondence with Botborg in 2008, Scott Sinclair (the musician half of the duo, although the roles easily merge together) wrote that:
Botborg is primarily a live improvised performance - it is all 'composed' in real-time - so there is a large amount of chance involved. Without giving it all away... basically the technical setup is complex enough (digital and analogue equipment going everywhere) that there is a new image/sound for us to work with every time (like a ghost in the machine).
Comparing their studio-based performances on DVD (Fig. 18) Track 17) with their live video performances available online via their website, the difference between the two is minor (save for some updates in technology producing new effects due to date differences) as each Botborg performance is a full on sensory attack; screaming audio feedback akin to the experimental 23 noise music of Merzbow produces flickering, assaulting visuals that have more in common with the hand-painted films of Stan Brakhage than video, and this in return dictates the sound which then interact furthers with the visuals, and so on. As in time-based practices such as musical improvisation, whilst mistakes can occur in a players work, the interaction of others working with this mistake (who may not even consider it a mistake) can lead to interesting new developments; similarly, the structure that players work within whether a genre, a duration or the capabilities of an instrument - determines the direction and objective that the practice moves towards. Botborgs objective is to purely work with a system that is purposefully uncontrollable by its nature, one that can only generate mistakes as the internal logic of this system dictates its practice their Sisyphean live performances are an attempt to understand a beast which defies understanding. Part-scientific exercise, part-sideshow, they present their findings to curious spectators who watch and hear the experimenters further tease new effects, sounds and glitches out of technology, ultimately revealing that despite our best intentions as artists to control the electronic signal, our efforts are never ending as every new joining wire to a circuit potentially opens up a new path for further discovery and exploration.
24 Conclusion
The destructural artist is now more productive and inspired than ever. With the internet allowing for easier access to communities of like-minded artists to share work, ideas, information and knowledge, the possibilities of what can be achieved with video and electronic moving images are evolving at a tremendous speed. Whereas once artists worked out independently ways of adapting technology to better befit them, nowadays artists are collaborating with people from different artistic fields, corresponding with likeminded artists online and sharing original techniques in video online with the world.
There is no set model for the destructural artist in history. From my research they all originate from different backgrounds - from interests as varied as filmmaking or music or sculpture or mathematics. They all exert a level of focus in pushing their respective technologies beyond their primary functions. Quite often I have found, most artists that I have written about have since moved on from the works I have discussed they all tend to be made early on in their artistic practice. These destructural exercises usually originate from mistakes rather than pre-planned goals a large degree of chance is inherent.
Throughout my research, Ive become aware that the destructural aesthetic is more prolific in some decades than in others; I believe that these bursts of activity are dictated by the technologies available at the time. Early destructural works from the late 1960s to early 1970s often feature a reductive or repetitive preoccupation with the medium, limited to the abilities of video 25 technology available then. Works from the early 1970s to the late 1980s involve a more constructive exploration of video by a second wave of artists who explore video making either through art school or through the proliferation of home video technology. Some create new equipment to push the medium into new directions, or reappropriate older technology. Video art had become established by the 1990s and the technology had advanced to a point where more linear, straight forward approaches were favoured - some computer or net art works continue the destructural approach however, as artists were faced with a new medium for exploration and exploitation. Recent destructural works combine digital video (which has pretty much replaced analog video), computers and inexpensive second-hand technology which can justify potentially destructive experimentation. The gallery space is going out in favour of the live music venue, with more video artists collaborating with musicians to explore synaesthesia, which can now be technologically achieved to a degree. The glitch is now on tour like a virus.
Ultimately, the destructural artist is an opportunist working with whatever technology is available to use and misuse. But I fear that already were moving towards an increasingly instable digital future, where we happily accept daily occurrences of the medium-specific flaw (low bit rate mp3s, slow technology) if this is so, is there any need for destructural artists in a society that has become accustomed to the glitch? Is a glitch still a glitch if we are not troubled by its presence? McLuhan once said that If it works, its obsolete (1964, p.24) - if this is so, maybe true subversion in future moving images will be using restructural aesthetics, to fix this mess weve already made. 26 Illustrations List
Figure 1. Sony (1967) Sony CV-2400 Portapak [Video camera, videotape recorder] Collection, Southwest Museum of Engineering, Communications and Computations, Glendale
Figure 2. Hall, D. (1973) Vidicon Inscriptions [Video] Collection, LUX, London
Figure 3. Lucier, M. (1975) Dawn Burn [Seven-channel video and slide projection, seven video monitors, seven video laser discs, plywood, paint, 35mm slide] Collection, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Figure 5. Critchley, D. (1977) Static Acceleration [Video] Collection, LUX, London
Figure 6. Rist, P. (1986) Im Not The Girl Who Misses Much [Video] Collection, Museum of Modern Art, New York
Figure 7. Rist, P. (1988) (Entlastungen) Pipilottis Fehler (Absolution - Pipilottis Mistakes) [Video] Collection, Museum of Modern Art, New York
Figure 8. Horowitz, A. (1990) Maxell [Video] Collection, Gavin Browns Enterprise, New York
Figure 9. Hall, D. (1976) This Is A Television Receiver [Video] Collection, LUX, London
27 Figure 10. Rosler, M. (1985) If It's Too Bad to Be True, It Could Be DISINFORMATION [Video] Collection, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles
Figure 11. Discenza, A. (2005) Backscatter [Video] Collection, Catherine Clark Gallery, San Francisco
Figure 12. Murata, T. (2005) Monster Movie [Video] Collection, Electronic Arts Intermix
Figure 13. Davis, P. B. & Ciocci, J. (2007) Compression Study #1 (Untitled Data Mashup) [Video]
Figure 14. Vasulka, W. (1974) C-Trend [Video] Collection, Daniel Langlois Foundation, Montreal
Figure 15. Rutt, B & Etra, S. (1973) Rutt/Etra Scan Processor [Scan Processor] Collection, The Vasulkas, Santa Fe
Figure 16. Steina (1978) Violin Power [Video] Collection, Daniel Langlois Foundation, Montreal
Figure 17. Klomp, K. & Verbruggen, T. (2005) Rex [Video]
Figure 18. Botborg (2006) ego is ether of cantabrigian the 93537829 in immodest to salubrious [Video]
28 Illustrations
Figure 1.
Sony (1967) Sony CV-2400 Portapak [Video camera, videotape recorder] Image obtained from http://www.smecc.org/video/wpe3A1.gif (Accessed: 5 December 2009)
Figure 2.
Hall, D. (1973-74) Vidicon Inscriptions [Video]. Image obtained from http://www.rewind.ac.uk/uploads/medium/DH083-01s.jpg (Accessed: 30 July 2009) 29 Figure 3.
Lucier, M. (1975) Dawn Burn [Seven-channel video and slide projection, seven video monitors, seven video laser discs, plywood, paint, 35mm slide]. Image obtained from Shanken, E.A. (ed.) (2009) Art and Electronic Media. London: Phaidon Press Ltd., p.70 Figure 4.
Viola, B. (1981) Hatsu-Yume (First Dream) [Video]. Image obtained from Hatsu-Yume (First Dream) (1981) Directed by B. Viola [DVD]. Amsterdam: ditions voir 30 Figure 5.
Critchley, D. (1977) Static Acceleration [Video]. Image obtained from http://www.luxonline.org.uk/images/artists/david_critchley/full/static09.jpg (Accessed: 26 August 2009)
Figure 6.
Rist, P. (1986) Im Not The Girl Who Misses Much [Video] Image obtained from http://www.moma.org/collection_images/resized/584/w500h420/CRI_151584 .jpg (Accessed: 3 August 2009) 31 Figure 7.
Rist, P. (1988) (Entlastungen) Pipilottis Fehler (Absolution - Pipilottis Mistakes [Video] Image obtained from http://www.moma.org/collection_images/resized/582/w500h420/CRI_151582 .jpg (Accessed: 3 August 2009)
Figure 8.
Horowitz, J. (1990) Maxell [Video]. Image obtained from http://www.gavinbrown.biz/img/gallery/JH-001.gif (Accessed: 26 August 2009) 32 Figure 9.
Hall, D. (1976) This Is A Television Receiver [Video]. Image obtained from http://www.rewind.ac.uk/uploads/medium/DH088s.jpg (Accessed: 30 July 2009)
Figure 10.
Rosler, M. (1985) If It's Too Bad to Be True, It Could Be DISINFORMATION [Video] Image obtained from http://hammer.ucla.edu/image/1026/450/450.JPG (Accessed: 4 August 2009) 33 Figure 11.
Discenza, A. (2005) Backscatter [Video] Image obtained from http://www.cclarkgallery.com/dynamic/images/detail/Anthony_Discenza_Bac kscatter_885_45.jpg (Accessed: 26 October 2009)
Figure 12.
Murata, T. (2005) Monster Movie [Video] Image obtained from http://www.thestranger.com/binary/e5f0/visart-magnum-500.jpg (Accessed: 16 May 2009)
34 Figure 13.
Davis, P. B. & Ciocci, J. (2007) Compression Study #1 (Untitled Data Mashup) [Video] Image obtained from http://vertexlist.net/B%20I%20T%20M%20A%20P_catalogue_files/image03 0.jpg (Accessed: 30 July 2009)
Figure 14.
Vasulka, W. (1974) C-Trend [Video] Image obtained from http://www.vasulka.org/Videomasters/pages_stills/images/CTrend_02.jpg (Accessed: 8 August 2009)
35 Figure 15.
Rutt, B & Etra, S. (1973) Rutt/Etra Scan Processor [Scan Processor] Image obtained from Vasulka, W. & Weibel, P (ed.) (2008) Buffalo Heads: Media Study, Media Practice, Media Pioneers, 1973-1990. Cambridge: The MIT Press, p.401
Figure 16.
Steina (1978) Violin Power [Video] Image obtained from http://farm1.static.flickr.com/36/114218223_57f0da02ca_o_d.jpg (Accessed: 8 August 2009) 36 Figure 17.
Klomp, K. & Verbruggen, T. (2005) Rex [Video] Image obtained from Rex. (2005) Directed by Karl Klomp and Tom Verburggen [DVD]. Amsterdam: Sonic Acts Figure 18.
Botborg (2006) ego is ether of cantabrigian the 93537829 in immodest to salubrious [Video] Image obtained from ego is ether of cantabrigian the 93537829 in immodest to salubrious. (2006) Directed by Botborg. [DVD]. New Zealand: Half/theory 37 Appendix 1 S A T U R D A Y , 2 2 A U G U S T 2 0 0 9 WHAT IS DESTRUCTURAL VIDEO? Destructural video is an art movement of video and moving image artists who aestheticize the exploration of medium specific flaws which perpetrate themselves as visual and/or audible glitches in their work.
Examples of medium specific flaws can include: video drop outs; digital artefacts; imperfect codecs; static; noise; nth generation video damage; circuit bent hardware; data manipulation (e.g "datamoshing"); faulty or unorthodox wire connections; video feedback; corrupt filetypes; crashes; computer glitches; camera glitches; synthesized images; creative viruses; affected videotapes, CD-ROMS, DVDs, media players, computer programs, video games, televisions, games consoles etc.
Although destructural video is a new term to describe this movement, destructural video itself is not new and its origins can be seen as far back as the history of video art itself. Indeed, as long as video has existed as an artistic tool to use, the need to explore what its technological limits are have always been an important source of concern and curiosity to artists. It can be argued that whilst technology is still developing, ultimately it will never become perfect due to human interference - therefore flaws should always exist, just waiting to be discovered and exploited by artists. The glitch prevails!
I have used the term 'destructural video' for a number of reasons. Firstly, destructural' is a portmanteau (or, if you will, a corruption) of the words 'deconstruct', 'structural' and 'destruct'. Artists involved in destructural video 'deconstruct' the moving image medium not only on a physical/visual level, but often on philosophical levels too. Structural relates to structural[-materialist] film, an earlier art movement that looked at medium specificity and the idea of "film as film"; destructural video extends further upon this idea of structural-materialist film philosophy, but is not solely limited to film. Finally, artists working in destructural video will often employ destruction of the medium they are using in order to produce the results they desire. (July/August 2009)
38 Appendix 2
Destructural Video (http://rhizome.org/discuss/view/43738)
Posted by John McAndrew on September 21, 2009 7:24 am
Hello everyone, this is my first post to Rhizome so please be gentle! My name is John McAndrew and I'm a Fine Art student at the University of Cumbria. I'm currently writing my dissertation on the history of video and moving image art, but with a focus on artists that exploit flaws and glitches in the video medium and use them to their benefit. I've self-dubbed this particular strain of video art 'destructural video'. I've been researching this subject for a few months now and am slowly bringing together all my findings into my first draft (the final copy isn't due until December/January). I figured some of you might find what I'm writing about interesting. You can find more information regarding my subject at my blog (here) and also on this Facebook group (here). Both are a bit empty when it comes to discussion from people other than myself, so if anyone wants to contribute in some way by posting some comments or recommendations then it'd be really appreciated! I'd especially love to hear from any artists who wants to share some of their work with me, or discuss 'destructural video' too. Once I finish the dissertation I'll be sure to post a link here for you all to read.
I'm looking forward to hearing from some of you! Hell, even if it's just to criticize the term 'destructural video'...
Comment by Mary Hull Webster September 21, 2009 2:14 pm Hi John, I like both the term destructural and the idea of destructuring video. I have a video that relied on low-res taping of a moving sculpture I made. I continued to break up the image, over and over, using Final Cut Pro, reshooting my computer screen with a video camera, etc. The final piece is called A Chorus of Cells, and you can see it online at http://lookingforlucia.com/contn1.html, which is a stand-alone video, but also part of a larger web fiction in progress. I have another piece that was made in NTSC, then shown on a monitor set for secam, which broke things up nicely.... No time right now to read your ideas--about to leave town for two weeks--but it sounds interesting to me....destructuring is the heart of transforming something from one state to another--the breakdown is the pivot point. Best wishes, Mary Reply to this post
Comment by John McAndrew September 24, 2009 7:41 am 39 Hi Mary, Thank you for your reply! I apologise for not replying immediately but unfortunately I'm not always able to access the internet every day. I thought your video A Chorus of Cells was quite interesting; even though the refilming process is not a new thing, the use of multiple images really made it standout for me as well as its unsteadiness. Admittedly it wasn't quite what I w as looking for, but I appreciated you sharing it. How ever. the piece you mentioned of a NTSC video being show n on a monitor set for SECAM - now that's the sort of thing I'm interested in! Like you said regarding destructuring (which was intentionally chosen as it's a made up word, or rather a corruption of other words like "destruct", "structural" and "deconstruct"), the breakdown is the pivot point. It's that fine line, that tension, between something not working how you planned it or expected it to, and it falling apart completely beyond repair. Technological conflicts, unorthodox ways of using the video as a medium, breaking established rules set by broadcasting standards etc - these are things what I find fascinating. Like when you watch a DVD or listen to a CD, and the media format is corrupt in a way or affected, and things start skipping or playing up, which immediately pulls you out of the comfort zone. Then you realize you're not listening to music or not transported to an imaginary life away from your own, but rather you're listening to or watching an emulation or a synthesis of these representations. And whilst many people would be driven insane by these glitches, I find a beauty in them. This is a small factor of what destructural video constitutes for me! By the way, the idea of breaking down the illusionary properties when you watch a video is one of the reasons I chose "destructural" as my term; as I've mentioned else where on my other links, "destructural" links in with and relates to "structural" as in structural filmmaking, which promoted an anti- illusionary w ay of creating (and therefore viewing) films. Whilst it's admittedly a somewhat dated sort of modernist art movement, and very formalist in its philosophy, I do feel there's been a resurgence of artists interested in similar film-as-film (or now rather, video-as-video) principles. Where I feel destructural video expands upon structural film, is that artists have taken these formalist ideas but used them with new media forms such as video or computer-assisted visuals, and with these new technologies the potential to realise more extreme forms of anti-illusionary revelations come into play. You're no longer editing films frame by frame ala Sharits, but editing the very data or DNA of something ala Arcangel. And with these come new ways of watching things seemingly fall apart in front of your very own eyes. If it would be okay with the moderators of Rhizome, can I use this thread to post links to videos or artists that I feel represent destructural video? That way it would save me from making new separate posts every time I want to share something that I feel is relevant to my subject, and hopefully keeps everything tidy and all under this one thread? If this goes against the etiquette of this discussion board, then please let me know. Failing that, I recommend that people have a brow se on the Facebook group I mentioned and look at some of the artists I mention in the ever-growing discussion threads there (some of the contributors to Rhizome might even be mentioned?). And again, please join and contribute if you feel so inclined! 40 Comment by Mary Hull Webster October 15, 2009 11:00 am John, all this is very interesting...I went to your blog, tried to look at the list of artists, but the ones I wanted to see restrict info for casual visitors, so I couldn't see what they were doing without committing myself to their sites. One of the great things about the Net is that a person can be solo, NOT connected by choice to lots of people, NOT moving in a crowd, but can post work and ideas, which I love seeing from all over. It seems to be that one of the philosophical ideas embedded in destructuring has to do with getting past the group mentality, ANY group mentality, to see what an individual does. Of course your purpose in writing a dissertation is to consider a group of artists who seem to be working along similar lines--and to make some comments that may draw a circle around them, much as a curator does. I've bookmarked your blog and will check back. By the way, the original footage in my piece, A Chorus of Cells, was of one moving sculpture with lights inside it. It was in the intentional degradation of the footage over a long process that the image was broken into multiple images. It seems to me that you are cycling back into the formal pursuits of Modernism, as I am...eventually, all of the "positioning" of artists within collective causes gets dry and my interest becomes forced because there is no formal hook that engages my eyes. I guess you know about Nicolas Bourriaud's "altermodern" show at the Tate. My students near San Francisco are very interested in his ideas. With best wishes, Mary
Comment by marc garrett October 15, 2009 11:25 am Hi there, I am also interested in Nicolas Bourriaud, he is not a great man, more of a top- down patriarchal thief , imposing his ego-centered modernist (non)values, on others to submit to, in hope of a profile in history... Those who follow him are not only sheep, they are lost sheep ;-) you may be interested in this article here: Altermodernism: The Age of the Stupid - by Ellie Harrison. http://www.furtherfield.org/displayreview.php?review_id=360 "Postmodernism is dead" declares Nicolas Bourriaud in the opening line of his manifesto for our new global cultural era - the 'altermodern'. As a preface to the latest Tate Triennial exhibition of the same name, the French curator and theorist sets about defining what he sees as the parameters of our contemporary society and offering paradigms for artistic approaches to navigating and negotiating them. This essay aims to identify what the birth of this new era tells us about our culture's relationship to time. It will explore how we choose to define the periods in which we live and how our relationships with the past, present and future seem to constantly evolve. As a central focus, it brings together two examples of cultural events from 2009 which have both, in semi-revolutionary ways, attempted to define our current age. The Altermodern exhibition and its accompanying Manifesto (Bourriaud 2009b) launched at the Tate Britain on 4th February provides the first, and the second is provided by The Age of Stupid - a feature film and 41 accompanying environmental campaign launched in UK cinemas on 20th March. Set in the year 2055, The Age of Stupid focuses on a man living alone in a world which has all but been destroyed by climate change. In an attempt to understand exactly how such a tragedy could have befallen his species and the society and culture which they created over the course of several millennia, he begins to review a series of 'archive' documentary clips from 2008. His aim is to discover how his ancestors - the one generation of people w ho had the power to prevent the impending disaster - could have demonstrated such disregard or contempt for the future.
By focusing on two central texts - Bourriaud's Altermodern Manifesto and a faux encyclopedia entry from the future which retrospectively defines 'the Age of Stupid' released as promotional material for the film (Appendix One) - the essay aims to explore the disturbing continuities between these two perceptions of our current times and the drastic consequences these could have, if left unchecked, for the future of humanity and indeed the future of art. Comment by Kate Southworth November 3, 2009 3:21 pm
Hi Marc, I couldn't disagree with you more. I've been writing about the similarities and differences between net art and 'relational art' for the last few months and have read and re-read several texts by Nicolas Bourriaud. And it seems to me that (in Relational Aesthetics, for example) he articulates very well indeed the socio-economic context within which artists were making work during the 1990s. He understands, I think, the significance of the shift to artists devising the parameters of the situation within which inter-subjective encounters emerge. I think his articulation of these shifts is highly relevant to anyone working in the emerging areas of distributed network art, and especially to anyone, like me, obsessed with the role of protocol in distributed work. I haven't got the quote exactly, but ten years ago, Nicolas Bourriaud was asking 'what is the 'glue'' that holds relational work together. What a killer question! Ten years later, I'd suggest, possibly, that protocol is the 'glue' that that holds temporally and spatially discrete elements together and is the organising frame of relational, network and other non-centralised contemporary art practices. all my very best Kate
42 Comment by Mary Hull Webster November 3, 2009 6:00 pm Kate et al, Some years ago I had a fleeting realization that eros as heat or energy, which may be the source of connective glue within quantum physics, the net, or sex, is a palpable principle that attracts me very much. This view probably falls back to Freud's pleasure principle. In a sense what attracts me to the net, the phrase "relational art," to the Tate Modern exhibition online, and to beauty in art, is pleasure. Along with this attraction, I want to be as conscious as possible, and certainly lean politically to the left and progressive causes for the wellbeing of all persons on the earth. I am still entranced by Barack Obama because I perceive his philosophical position to be one of erotic integration of warring opposites. Most of my art is influenced by this position, which I find as well in Buddhism, Taoism, and the opposites in Jungian psychology. This looks like a re-emergence of a meta idea that I need, or a Neo-Platonic position, or maybe an "altermodern," or a sort of neo-romantic shift. The terms don't matter and nobody is being pressed to join up. These are my interests, maybe not yours.
So, if you, Kate, think protocol is the glue that allows you and me to talk to each other, that's fine with me, but it's the eros between us that calls me to the platform. I'd be interested in reading some of your work. You can contact me at mhwdotcom@comcast.net if you would like to share some links or references. With best wishes, Mary
Comment by Kate Southworth (Replies won't nest below this level) November 4, 2009 2:15 am Hi Mary and others, I should clarify that I don't think that protocol is the glue that allows you and me to talk to each other - but that maybe it is the glue that holds together art that is made from discrete elements. Extending Alexander Galloway and Eugene Thacker's writings, I see protocol as that which organises and controls discrete elements within any distributed system. Protocol as a medium enables the portability of relational artworks and artworks without a central point of focus. So protocol is useful, but nonetheless is a system of control. I am particularly interested in how artists 'come to' systems of control - in particular Agnes Martin's grids and Sol LeWitt's alogorithms. I would suggest that both Martin and LeWitt work within a logic of co-existence: that is, they don't destroy the grid, or algorithm, but they do fragilise it. I'll send you a couple of papers that I presented at this year's ISEA in Belfast which start to map some of these ideas. all my very best kate
43 Comment by nicolas bourriaud November 3, 2009 10:12 am Dear Marc Garett, I will have a look at the "age of stupid", which sounds like being in my field of interests... Concerning the "sheeps" that would "follow" me : I think I only have readers. Hopefully. The sheeps have to be counted, according to me, among the ones who believe blindly the massive caricatures of my point of view in the english mainstream press AND their reflect, aka some self proclaimed guardians of the marxist temple. So, please, read the texts (and not the press releases, by the way). And, f rankly, if you knew me, you would be ashamed of seeing me as "patriarchal"... (big laugh) All the best, NB
Comment by marc garrett November 3, 2009 10:39 am Hi Nicolas, Thank you for your response. If you wish me to see observe your contexts, then it is only fair that you discover what I am part of... wishing you well, perhaps we will meet one day :-) p.s. You do sound cute ;-)
44 Comment by Nick Briz November 3, 2009 7:41 pm Hey John, I'm currently working towards my MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and my focus is very similar. We differ in that maybe I'm a bit more concerned with the digital glitch specifically, as I'm very interested in the way that it relates to digital culture. However, after looking at your blog I noticed there's definitely a lot of overlap in our interests. Some things:
Here's an article I wrote on Glitch Art recently: http://fnewsmagazine.com/wp/2009/10/titleglitch-amp-arttitle/ I also put this together: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glitch_Art Here's a link to some of my work: http://www.nickbriz.com/videos/ANewEcology.mov http://vimeo.com/4529527 http://rhizome.org/object.php?o=48468&m=1057411 I've also been very interested in curating this kind of work. I curated a program called Glitch Night in Orlando FL last year and I'm curating a program called Glitch: Investigations into the New Ecology of our Digital Age here's a flyer for that: http://nickbriz.com/New_ecology_poster.pdf I can email you program notes/associated writings if you'd like. Also here are others that have written on/worked with Glitch Art which you might find interesting: Evan Meaney (evanmeaney.com) http://evanmeaney.com/glitching/theory/evan_meaney_onglitching.pdf Rosa Menkman (rosa-menkman.blogspot.com) http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/1332959/Rosa%20Menkman%20- %20Artifacts%20and%20Critical%20Media%20Aesthetics.pdf Iman Moradi (http://www.organised.info/) http://designingimperfection.com/ http://www.oculasm.org/glitch/dow nload/Glitch_dissertation_print_with_pics.pdf Richard Almond (http://blog.rafolio.co.uk/) http://rafolio.co.uk/maadm/thesis/projectreportweb.pdf Hope this helps, There's a lot more w here this came from, just let me know. -Nick- (nickbriz@gmail.com)
45 Comment by John McAndrew November 4, 2009 10:27 am Wow! I don't visit Rhizome for a few weeks, expecting hardly any replies to appear, and then come back to this! Thanks everyone for your responses - even if some went off on unexpected but all together welcome tangents (I never would have expected Nicolas Bourriaud to post here of all places!). Obviously I need to use this site more. Like you said Mary, Bourriaud's quite influential with art students and I know a number of people on my course are especially inspired and influenced by his opinions. I find his book Postproduction more to my liking and interests. Nick, all those links are great! I'm familiar with a few names that you mention but others are less well known to me (I'm more familiar with video art, rather than new media art), so thanks! I tend to use the term "medium-specific fault or flaw" as my definition of what a glitch entails is perhaps a little too all- encompassing; especially when mentioned in relation to the history of video art, for me the glitch spans right from analog disruptions all the way to digital glitches. Nevertheless, our interests are firmly implanted in provoking an electronic medium into doing things it wasn't intended to do. It's interesting you mention Iman Moradi - his dissertation for example was one of the first papers I read re: glitch art and aesthetics, and somewhat frustratingly I found it covered a lot of subjects I originally set out to write about (although he did it 6 years before I did!). Incidentally, he also happens to live about 10 miles away from my home town, ha! We've since corresponded a few times to each other online and I'm actually hoping to meet him in person next week all being w ell. Again, thanks again to everyone for replying! It's given me a much needed push in getting this dissertation done...
Comment by Nick Briz November 4, 2009 1:54 pm Absolutely, in terms of glitch as a "medium-specific fault or flaw " there is an analog history that predates the digital one, and if we consider glitch as simply a disturbance/flaw in a system it has a history that can predate even electronic analog technology, Jon Satrom (A professor here at the Art Institute of Chicago and fellow glitch enthusiast) adopts a similar mindset. That there's a long history for the appreciation, or rather interest, in "errors" and/or "accidents" is for sure, I guess I've just been more taken by the digital kind (for varies reasons, including, as I mentioned before my interest in glitch's relation to digital culture). good luck with you're dissertation, I'm very interested in reading it when you're finished!
46 DVD Track Listing
Nb. Most videos are full length and taken from high quality sources; others which originate from online are of a reduced quality. Some videos may be excerpted.
Track 1: Hall, D. (1973-74) Vidicon Inscriptions [2:36] Track 2: Viola, B. (1981) Hatsu-Yume (First Dream) [4:38] Track 3: Benglis, L. (1972) Noise [0:29] Track 4: Critchley, D. (1977) Static Acceleration [13:32] Track 5: Rist, P. (1986) Im Not The Girl Who Misses Much [4:57] Track 6: Rist, P. (1988) (Entlastungen) Pipilottis Fehler (Absolution - Pipilottis Mistakes) [11:20] Track 7: Hall, D. (1976) This Is A Television Receiver [7:32] Track 8: Rosler, M. (1985) If It's Too Bad to Be True, It Could Be DISINFORMATION [16:32] Track 9: Discenza, A. (2005) Backscatter [0:52] Track 10: Murata, T. (2005) Monster Movie [4:09] Track 11: Davis, P. B. & Ciocci, J. (2007) Compression Study #1 (Untitled Data Mashup) [1:59] Track 12: Davis, P. B. (2007) Compression Study #4 (Barney) [2:49] Track 13: Vasulka, W. (1974) C-Trend [8:26] Track 14: Steina (1978) Violin Power [9:53] Track 15: Steina & Vasulka, W. (1978) Digital Images [3:59] Track 16: Klomp, K. & Verbruggen, T. (2005) Rex [3:23] Track 17: Botborg (2006) ego is ether of cantabrigian the 93537829 in immodest to salubrious [5:46]
47 References
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50
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